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August 20, 2012

My Stephen King Project

Over at sharp pencils, I've been reading, and writing about, Stephen King's books in order of publication.

Last November, I read On Writing, King's non-fiction book on the craft, and was impressed. I had been wanting to read a couple of his novels - It and The Stand - for a number of years, and so thought, in my completist, obsessive way, that I'd read all of his books, in order.

Thanks to a number of area thrift stores and eBay, I have been able to get a hard cover copy of nearly all of his books.

Top five books (so far, in chrono order): 'Salem's Lot, The Stand, The Long Walk, Firestarter, Different Seasons.
March 5: Carrie (1974)

19 comments:

Hi Allan - My wife and I own a used book store and we have lots of King books come in and out. Are there any hardcovers you still need to round out your collection? Even if I don't have them, I can keep an eye out for you. I've been enjoying Sharp Pencils very much!

I'm just returning from two weeks of vacation, which explains my absence from the boards over that same time. Truth be told, after they blew the game against the Twins on 04 August (Mauer's two-out, three-run bomb in the ninth), which I had the displeasure of experiencing in person, I needed a breather from this team and limited myself to the box scores found in the local newspaper.

As much as I'm trying to remain optimistic and channel my inner John Blutarsky, I have to agree with Allan. Call it bad luck, poor management, whatever, this was just not the year.

I really need to read On Writing at some point. Everything I've heard about it has been positive.

This is an awesome project, Allan. I keep waiting for the day King gets the recognition he deserves outside of "dude that sells a lot of books", and I'm glad you're doing your part to bring that day closer.

And yet, as I have found, if you want to go deeper and look at his stuff from a lit crit viewpoint, you can. There is a lot of stuff out there, though I wish there was more. It has really enriched my reading, especially of Cujo, Pet Sematary, and The Stand.

I admire King, certainly including On Writing. Writers as prolific as he is are like musicians who produce that many songs: not every one is going to be a masterpiece. But the early career you have represented here is very solid. Based mostly on long-ago readings, I would say only Cujo and Rage are kind of...bad. My wife asked me to read the Hunger Games books, but there is more stark pleasure in a similar nightmarish life-or-death game in his short novel The Long Walk than there is in all three of those books.

Many I have not reread as an adult / older adult, and I haven't read all of his stuff from the 90's on. The Tommyknockers is one that I thought was crappy. Cell from a few years ago just made me feel gross.